Vulture Pretty Much the Only Thing Keeping ‘Cavemen’ Alive

In yesterday’s New York Times’ “Arts & Leisure” section, Dave Itzkoff rips the lid off the vast, inane critical conspiracy against Vulture’s favorite scripted TV show of the now-dead fall season, Cavemen: “Every year, it seems, one new series is offered up as a sacrificial lamb to the critical gods,” he writes. “In 2007 that show has undeniably been Cavemen.” Itzkoff outlines critics’ flimsy case against the series (“‘It smelled to people like an attempt at commercialism,’ [Cavemen writer Will] Speck said”) and calls out some of the show’s more ridiculous reviews (“David Bianculli of The Daily News in New York wrote that he had not seen the debut episode but hated it anyway, awarding it zero stars.”). After reading a few grafs, we were so blinded by rage that we almost missed this part at the end:

And while most critics took swings at Cavemen, a few have come out in the show’s defense … [T]he New York magazine blog Vulture (nymag.com/daily/entertainment) is unequivocal in its support, begging, “Please, ABC, don’t cancel Cavemen!” […]

Still, the producers say they have no delusions about the long-term viability of Cavemen, and are simply trying to sustain themselves with the small bits of electronic praise that trickle in to them via Web pages and Google News alerts. “When we’re feeling kind of beaten down,” [Cavemen creator Bill] Martin said, “we’ll read it out loud in the writers’ room, like, ‘Thank you! There is a God!’ You don’t want to admit it has that much power over you, but it really does.”

We know how you feel, Bill Martin, because that’s exactly the way we feel when we’re watching Cavemen. Needless to say, you can continue to count on Vulture’s unending love and support.

The article goes on to say that, were it not for the writers’ strike, the show would probably have been canceled by now, but that ABC hasn’t yet decided what to do with the seven already-taped episodes it has in the can (SEND THEM TO US SO WE CAN WATCH THEM!). We can only pray that the strike continues until all episodes are aired, Cavemen finally gets the huge ratings it deserves, and ABC orders ten more seasons. Save Cavemen!

A Sitcom Battles Its Own Prehistory [NYT]